Round 8 deck discussion

[justaburd]

Main Matches inthisroom vs Annamall vagman13 vs Gen. kev Support Matches justaburd vs Drake_XIV Elbirn vs Laxadarap Bloom vs Kakerlake element vs Generals normal players vs vs

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Deckbuilding: Duel phase has started
Duels: Fighting ends!

Spoiler for what this topic is for:

We'll use this topic (and chat) to discuss who should take which deck with what build, etc.  As I said in the Deck Ideas thread, you are ultimately responsible for your deck choice each round.  I will not be choosing your deck for you (though I hope you'll listen to the opinions of your teammates and I  ).  Part of deckbuilding is choosing roles for each player.  It makes more sense to include who should be Lt for the round as a part of the deckbuilding discussion as the Lt gets three extra ups.  Likewise, we have a decision to make each round on whether to make use of the Berserker ability, etc.  In future rounds we will also need to discuss s/d/c/p.  All of these discussions occur concurrently, and we'll use a thread like this as well as chat to facilitate the discussion.

Spoiler for Member roles reminders:

General - uses nine ups
- Lieutenant - uses six ups
- Strategist - may remove up to six cards from his deck before each duel. Each duel must have a legal deck, and his full deck must also be legal.
- Berserker - discard 1, 2 or 3 cards from the Vault during deckbuilding. The Berserker may use 1, 3 or 4 extra upgrades respectively.
- Quartermaster - if the Quartermaster plays in a battle, each winner from their team may claim 1 card from their element by relinquishing 3 of their salvage, or 2 salvage if the Quartermaster wins. Limit of two cards per person. Teams may not claim cards they already have at least 6 copies of.
- Standard Bearer - salvages N more cards and discards N fewer cards, where N is the number of wins their team has had that round.

Please try to have initial thoughts written 48 hours into deckbuilding each round at the very latest.  Bonus points for earlier.   That gives us two days to discuss, finalize, sdcp, add everything to vault, etc.

Countdown to 48 hour mark: was here

[justaburd]

vs 2 nymphs feel really dangerous to bring against aether. All they need are a couple lightnings to deal with it. I think I'd suggest something creature heavy instead. Therefore hurricane

vs sancstall should do very nicely.

I feel good about my ghostmair against water, so I'll do that. Bloom and elbirn, you two might want to give it a test. It's pretty strong actually.

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5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5of 5of 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 606 606 606 606 606 606 8ps

shockwave version

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5of 5of 5on 5on 5on 5on 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 606 606 606 606 606 606 8ps

As a note, I don't consider the deck to be stable without at least 5 dark pends. So care with the tweaking

[AnnaMall]

After some extensive live testing with burd and sleeping over the results, here are my thoughts. We got one break/bypass deck and a deckouter as our "best" decks. Both our opponents believe we got the bonair intact and some dims. I expect both aether and entropy to send a dim fractal with some CC to cover for both or even a strat role if they feel thay need so. Also a heavy CC/heal deck with 40 cards can beat us but I dont see it very probable.

Spoiler for aether possible decks:

Aether deck that can cope best with all our decks, strat role for more CC:

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61q 61q 61q 61q 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 7dm 7dm 7dm 7ds 7ds 7ds 8po

This might be a viable solution too but I highly doubt they salvaged any poisons or that they spend their strat for the poisons alone:

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52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52r 52r 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 713 713 713 713 71b 71b 8pk

Spoiler for entropy possible decks:

Entropy can only run such a deck with the strat role

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vf 4vn 4vn 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 61q 61q 61q 61r 61r 61r 61r 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 622 6tv 6u3 7dm 8pu

Bad thing is that we got one bypass deck. Good thing is that the 2 nymphs can hold the CC those decks pack and still win.

So without any confidence my proposition is:

Vs - send jen's mod of 2 nymphs

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Vs  - send modded bonair with the hope of CCing the burst. With a bit of luck something like this might work

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vn 4vn 4vn 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5og 5oh 5oh 5oh 5oh 5oi 5oi 5ol 5ol 5ol 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 71b 71b 71b 71b 7mv 7mv 8pk

The drags are there just for fatness and can be swaped with deadcards. This allows to save 13 cards if we lose and AM splash can be swaped with SS splash

[Jen-i]

we have 4 Owl's Eye and 2 Flying Weapons in the vault - using all 6 in both decks in not possible

That said - I think we're only likely to face the Strat deck from Entropy - I think Aether is more likely to send theirs against Entropy (due in large part to the fact that they've consistently beaten them)

Vs
I think it highly likely (I'm guessing 90%) that Aether sends Lt. and Fractrix our direction. They've already shown they think the deck beats a number of ours - my testing says it eats Sanc Stall alive and that it easily outrushes 2 Nymphs, it should (in theory) be able to beat a Bone Wall Stall deck. I see Psiontal being played against Earth and Grabbow being played against Time. Panda & Bone Bolt make better sense against Entropy than against us which pushes them into playing Fractrix even more strongly.

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In limited testing this seems to beat the fractrix they've been running against us. I'm not in love with the idea of using OE in the deck (its too vulnerable to PC) but I think the deck needs a 4th damage source.


Vs
I consider the odds of entropy running Pandebonium against us highly unlikely - they have to be concerned that we'll run Sanc Stall against them again - and the odds of poison damage beating Sanc Stall is pretty tiny. Panda has had success against Aether - I see this a far more likely play.

They have 2 Grabbow - and while they "could" send one against us I think it more likely they send one against Time (as a means of countering their Discordbow) and a second against Aether. The danger of sending a Grabbow against us, is again that it runs into Sanc Stall, Sancs counter Discord and buried Grabbows, unburied grabbies die to Shockwaves, TStorm or OE. Between OE, Fog and Sancs we overload their limited PC.

I think entropy will be running their Dim/PUagon deck against us - I'd say 75% chance they also make it a Strat deck including 4 lightning (as a means of countering 2 nymphs) and possibly AM. In testing it looks like a creature heavy flying OE version of 2 Nymphs wins handily. The CC from OE's significantly slows the dragon damage from entropy (and with only 4 PU in the deck getting swarmed is much less likely) in addition the CC from OE's allows you to remove AM's creatures from your own side. And finally upgraded nymphs require 2 lightning to kill - improving their survival odds significantly and stopping them from CCing other creatures with them.

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[Elbirn]

@Event Card: Does this mean that, since we've all kept the same roles as last round, we all get +1 upgrade? Even support?

[kev]

@Event Card: Does this mean that, since we've all kept the same roles as last round, we all get +1 upgrade? Even support?

Lol no, support can't use ups.    Actually we don't set the roles until the end of deckbuilding.  Only the player order is set atm.


  maul said in the Gdoc that teams will only know of our Cane if they're paying close attention.  I don't know about Pony, but Aether is definitely paying close attention.  That said, they seem to keep assuming we'll send Sanc stall their way.  I think they'd rate Sanc stall, 2 Nymphs, Bonair, and a dim splash all as more likely than Cane.  Theoretically our vault could've been crushed by attrition, forcing us to abandon Cane.  I gave thoughts on our next Aether matchup here and though we can't use the Str role in this matchup I still think that post makes sense.  I don't think we're likely to see dims, because all of our decks they see as most likely are stalls or use bypass damage.  I rate Fractix as more likely than their grabbow for a couple reasons, so this is the build I'd use as a starting point:

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  Last round they bet big that we'd take Bonair.  They missed and we took a different stall.  They may notice that we were able to salvage more stall cards last round (dims, AM, sancs, miracles), but even if they don't they'll know to be wary of our stalls.  As Jen points out here, they have only one stall (which is no good against our range) and one break - PUgons.  I think we're more likely to see a grabbow than PUgons because they have at least two, they view them as versatile and our range is complex, and we've struggled against Discs.  Ultimately I think we face a grabbow here because I expect their grabbow will test better against our range than their PUgons.

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[Jen-i]

I like the CC in the deck you propose kev - but my testing shows it doesn't have enough quanta to overcome an early discord - the CC sits dead in your hand too long and you end up dead - its perhaps a better play to up some of the quanta and run the deck almost mono - gives us a larger quanta pool early enough that CC remains effective.

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This seems a little more effective in testing - enough quanta to hopefully blunt the edge of Discord - enough CC to remove creatures and still enough damage to get a win. In addition the fire mark hopefully provides some hesitation in playing lightning for fear of nymphs entering play. And finally it should still have a shot at killing their Dim/PU deck (looks like 4-0 in trainer)

If we can avoid it I'd rather not gamble on one deck or another (PUagons or Grabbow) at least not if we can beat them both with any consistency. This is the best I've managed so far against Grabbow - looks like 60% (3-2 so far) and still manages to kill PUagons easily enough (4-1 so far)

[Jen-i]

So here's my testing so far:

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5-0 For the above deck when played against Fractrix in the trainer
6-4 For the above deck when Fractrix is played against it in the trainer (holy crap does it not know how to use either infection or TStorm very well - two of the loses were duo to the AI wasting a TStorm the turn before Fractrix won, if it had held the TStorm a turn instead and used it one turn later Hurricane would have won instead)

Spoiler for Fractrix Deck used for Testing:

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5f4 5f4 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 622 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 7ds 7ds 7ds 7ds 7ds 7ds 8po

In limited testing of Mall's 2 nymph suggestion - it seems the deck wins fairly consistently when it draws a nymph and gets thrashed soundly when it doesn't. 3-1 with drawing a nymph 0-3 without. If I were in Fire's shoes I'd probably include lightning as a means of countering unupped nymphs as opposed to the fire bolts I was using in the deck while testing.

In limited testing with the Bone Wall deck I went 5-0 no game was particularily close, and I managed to win won without drawing a Bone Wall at all 1 dragon turn 3 followed by a 2nd on turn 5 end the game pretty quick

[justaburd]

I'm currently at a tossup between the ghostmare versions. Chances are I'll decide on the shockwave version, so if I don't add anything else, I'll use that.

[kev]

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I'm going with Jen's version as my final draft.